The Biden-Ryan vice-presidential debate Thursday night brought out the media's "fact check" squads, including the New York Times,
which had a squad of reporters evaluating the statements of Joe Biden
and Paul Ryan online during the debate. Still, with perhaps 15 reporters
on the job Thursday night, the paper still had to out-source a crucial
Biden misstatement on Libya to the one-man fact-check machine at the Washington Post, Glenn Kessler, the next morning.

The Times boiled down a few of its findings for Friday's print edition under "Check Point[1]" on topics including Medicare, the stimulus, and the deadly assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

James Taranto has written[2]
at Opinion Journal that this new-style media "fact checking" is
"overwhelmingly biased toward the left" and "gives journalists much
freer rein to express their opinions by allowing them to pretend to be
rendering authoritative judgments about the facts."

The Times' debate product doesn't refute Taranto's argument. Reporter Michael Cooper had the top "Check Point" item and per usual[3] found the Republican at fault:

As
Representative Paul D. Ryan debated Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
on Thursday night, he sometimes seemed to be defending his own past
budget and Medicare proposals as much as his running mate’s plans -- sometimes in misleading ways.

When
Mr. Ryan was defending his plan to reshape Medicare so future
beneficiaries would receive fixed amounts of money to purchase private
insurance or buy into the existing government program -- a model for
Mitt Romney’s proposal -- he described his plan as “bipartisan,” and
called it “a plan I put together with a prominent Democrat senator from
Oregon.” But he failed to note that he later lost that Democrat’s
support.

And here's Cooper defending Obama's stimulus.

There
is plenty of debate over how effective Mr. Obama’s economic policies
have been, especially given the painfully slow recovery. But even
critics who believe that the president’s stimulus law was a missed
opportunity -- from liberals who say it was too small to conservatives
who say it was wasteful and poorly targeted -- tend to acknowledge what
the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has found: that it did save
or create jobs, lower the unemployment rate and help the economy grow in
the short term.

By contrast, the paper ignored a key point about
Libya. Reporter Eric Schmitt's contribution to the fact-check criticized
the administration but didn't weigh in on Biden's false claim "We weren’t told they wanted more security. We did not know they wanted more security there,"
although the paper's own Mark Landler wrote in a separate story Friday
that "Biden appeared to contradict other American officials when he
declared that the administration did not know about requests for more
security in Libya."

Indeed, the White House had to clarify Friday
morning that Biden was speaking for himself, not the administration. It
was up to the paper's left-wing editorial blog to clarify. Juliet
Lapidos wrote[4] early Friday afternoon:

Mr.
Biden fumbled somewhat when discussing Libya, and may have added to the
impression that the administration has been less than transparent about
what happened.

Mr. Biden said of the
consulate in Benghazi, “We weren’t told they wanted more security. We
did not know they wanted more security there.”

More examples of anti-Ryan slant appeared during Thursday night's debate. White House reporter Jackie Calmes blasted Ryan on Medicare[5].

Mr.
Ryan made a claim that journalists and independent fact-checkers have
repeatedly debunked: that President Obama and Congressional Democrats
raided Medicare benefits of $716 billion. But for Mr. Ryan, the claim
has drawn countercharges of hypocrisy on his part....What was even more
remarkable was that Mr. Ryan began echoing the charge against Democrats
within days of joining the Romney ticket....Now, as in 2010, the
Republican charge has several problems.

Also during the debate, Richard Oppel Jr. defended the president[6] against Ryan's claim that he has apologized for America values overseas.

The
claim of Mr. Obama apologizing for American values has been repeatedly
found to be inaccurate: While Mr. Obama has acknowledged American
failings at times -- and, like his predecessor, George W. Bush, has on
at least one occasion apologized for a specific act of American
wrongdoing abroad -- he has never explicitly apologized for American
values or diplomacy.

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